Photos of Northern Thailand Mission Trip 2003

This is Kat and I at a very poor village north of Chiang Rai. Situated 3,500 ft above sea level, it has no electricity and we had to get in and out via a very narrow hill side track. Toilets were pathetic...
We finished late and had to travel down this narrow track at the side of the mountain.
Here's Kat with a little Akha girl at a village called Hoka. Kat and some of her friends were giving horse-rides to the little village kids.
Here is Kat and some of our team's kids putting up a Puppet show at a village church, which would often be the best, most modern building. This one has brick walls - a super luxury.
Some of the villages were quite inaccessible by ordinary vehicles. We use 4x4s and you can see the GPS that you helped me buy in New Jersey being used here - a bit primitive but had been very helpful in getting me around in the dark. Another team member has a more sophisticated one. We have coordinates of a large number of villages stored since most are unmapped.
This is another really poor village. They have no electricity and limited sanitation. No doctor was available to them for years! We reached the village at sun-down and saw more than 100 patients using torchlight and battery powered lights.
This was the same village - I had to stitch up somebody's finger under torchlight! Surgery in the dark is really quite an experience!
Clinic in the dark. This is at the edge of the Golden Triangle! As a special treat for us, the village head served us opium leaves for dinner!
This was quite a banquet served to us by a more affluent village. It was a "Thanksgiving" meal - a major celebration among the Akha people for God's provision of a good harvest usually held in late November. We are eating the "new" rice. Really delicious.
The mountain scenery is really beautiful. The smell is something else! Temperature swings from 30°C in mid-day to about 3°C by midnight, thanks to the near cloudless skies at this time of the year.


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